How To Increase Your Creativity And Keep Your Brain Sharp

In today’s world we’re all numbed by the Media, Facebook, Twitter, Smartphones. So it’s no surprise that we need to find ways to protect ourselves, to free our minds and get our brains to work as they should.

Below is a list of things I have incorporated in my daily routine to make sure my brain is always working to its full potential.

I only read non-fiction. I focus on those books that’ll teach me something about business, self-improvement and anything that leads to a more abundant and desirable life.

My recommendation is to read books carefully and slowly, understand everything and read the book multiple times. This is necessary for books like Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill for example. QUALITY OVER QUANTITY!

Learn something you don’t know anything about for 15 minutes a Day

The first thing you should do before you start with that is to get rid off all mind-numbing distractions: news, social media random browsing and watching TV. This way you’ll have much more free time.

Now that you have more free time, you might as well read about something you don’t know anything about or something that interests you. For me those topics are science, history, philosophy, basically anything that gets my mind going.

Our brains need to be used and stimulated often in order for them to work flawlessly. So throwing new stuff at it is incredibly beneficial as it creates new connections and keeps our brains in top shape.

Write your ideas down everyday

The more you write down your ideas the more you’ll become an idea machine. It’s like a muscle that you have to exercise. If you don’t exercise your muscles, they shrink and become useless. The same goes with your “idea muscle”: If you don’t exercise it, you won’t be able to come up with great ideas.

You don’t have to come up with thousands of good ideas at once, you just have to come up with some ideas, no matter if they suck just write them down.

What should you do with your ideas? That’s up to you. You can throw them away, you can sell them, you can use them to create a product. Do whatever you please with your ideas, it doesn’t really matter. Their purpose is to exercise your idea muscle, not to be acted upon.

So go on, start to write down your ideas and maybe you’ll come up with one to make the world a better place, it could even make you a millionaire and there is no real loss here, so go ahead start writing!

Keep a Journal

I talked about this several times now. Journaling everyday is an incredibly powerful tool it will take 5-15 minutes depending on how much you did that day.

Journaling helps you to clarify your thoughts, it gives you a better focus and understanding on your everyday life and it is a very powerful tool to get to know yourself.

Another benefit that comes with journaling is that it activates our right side of the brain, which is the one linked to creativity and intuition.

It helps you to solve problems which you thought were unsolvable before, simply because you are switching from the analytical to the creative part of your brain.

Go and get pen and paper, it will allow you to really get into the flow of writing without distractions. I also believe that if you write it down on a piece of paper you create a deeper connection, it just feels better than typing it on a computer screen, so go grab a pen and paper and start journaling.

Learn/Practice a new skill

Our brains crave for new things, it just gets high on new stuff being thrown at it and if you don’t feed it with new information and skills it will slowly become sluggish and perish.

So what should you do? Learn new skills! It could be anything, a new language, a new game (chess for example), a new hobby (painting, carving, photography)
Our brains just thrive when learning something new and it will promote the creation of new connections in your brain, which will help all other aspects of your thinking.

Meditate

Meditating is pretty easy, you just need to have an idea of how it works and of course have reasonable expectations.

To begin you must commit yourself to it, tell yourself you’re going to meditate every single day for the next couple of months and write it down as well.
The first time, sit for five minutes, eyes closed and count your breath and focus on your breath. Breath in 1, out 2, in 3, out 4, and so on. When you get to 10, start again. Repeat it for 5 minutes if that is to long do it for 2-3 Minutes.

Again the focus should be on your breath, if a thought comes, acknowledge it and let it go that means you shouldn’t engage in your thought don’t think about it just let it go and think about your breath, start counting from 1 again.
After a few days, you’ll feel more comfortable and you’ll be able to add a few minutes.

If you are able to do this every single day, you’ll reap the benefits: reduced stress, increased happiness, increased focus and better creativity.

Now you have some tools you can use to improve your creativity and keep your brain in top shape.

As always thanks for reading and until next time.

P.S. You like to use your brain and ponder on things? Then I highly suggest to take a look at my book SHATTERED you can get it on Amazon.